LAUSR

to Otta, forcing women to renegotiate their positions as traders and ritual experts, at which they had excelled in the absence of their husbands. During the colonial period, then, women increasingly enacted their influence on social and political life in general, including the role of masquerades, through their positions as wives and daughters of the male custodians of these societies. This, Willis argues, has not been fully recognized in the existing literature on Yoruba masquerades, and is essential for understanding the continued influence of women on present-day masquerades in this context. Masquerading Politics offers insight into the social and political significance of an institution that may otherwise be understood primarily in terms of its ritual and historical, or traditionalist, importance in Yoruba society. The narration and analysis bear the mark of an insider who has mastered the intricacies of Otta’s complex social history, but who nevertheless approaches the contradictory historiographies of its masquerades with remarkable diligence. Anyone who has conducted empirical research on a contested issue will know how difficult that balance is to achieve. Even without the specialist knowledge required to appreciate its contribution to the field of Yoruba history, I have no doubt that Willis’s work should be a must-read for students and established scholars alike. The study’s level of detail and specificity does make the book less accessible to a generalist reader, such as myself, which in turn makes Willis’s contribution to rethinking the complex roles of female actors in social and political life less obvious. One would hope that the author continues to pursue this important research theme in a more generalist spirit in future publications.